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Ceremony
'What Happens in the Ceremony?' During this ceremony, there is a sitting room where handmaids go in and take their place kneeling near the chair with the footstool where the commander’s wife will sit and enthrone herself while holding a cane. The handmaid’s position is with their hands folded in their lap. Thighs together, heels put underneath their bodies. During the ceremony, all people who live in the house are summoned into this room. First the people who work at the house enter, then the wife, and lastly the husband. When the wife comes, she makes her way to the chair and footstool, lowers herself. Then the commander knocks at the door because he is supposed to ask for permission to enter into what is now his wife’s territory (Atwood 86.) When he enters the room he looks at all the people on it: one women in red (the handmaid), one seated women in blue (wife), two in green (Martas), and the chauffer. Then the commander gets a key out of his pocket, takes a leather covered box and opens it with the key, inside this box, there is the bible - which Is kept locked up so that the servants do not steal it. After that the commander sits down and crosses his legs. Then he reads a passage from the bible that says, “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth” and then the passage from Genesis. Then he closes the bible and his eyes for a few seconds. After that he says that everyone will have a moment of prayer to ask for blessing, and for success (Atwood 90.) In the end he says, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to know himself strong in the behalf of the, whose heart is perfect towards him” (Atwood 92.) This is the sign to dismiss the people from the room. For the ceremony, the handmaid lays down on her back all dressed except for the bottom part of her body which still have her underdrawers. The wife is on the head of the bed with her legs apart and the handmaid lies between them, head on stomach, pubic bone under the base of the handmaid’s skull, thighs on either side of the handmaid. The handmaid raises her arms and the wife holds them which means that they’re one flesh, but what it really means is that this is her territory and she is in control; the commander will be in the lower part of the handmaid’s body trying to conceive. Everything that goes on in the room has nothing to do with love, passion or romance. Nothing has to do with sexual desire because it would be a symptom of frivolity (Atwood 94.) After the commander finishes, he goes out and the handmaid is supposed to stay for ten minutes with her feet on a pillow to improve the chances of getting pregnant. Taking a look back at this ceremony we see how in order to have a child who really belongs to the wife, the commander and the handmaid have non-erotic sex with the wife present. Now, consider how each person during this ritual had a place and a duty to accomplish. Everyone made part of a group somehow with a purpose. Wives are the owners of the territory in order to give permission to the husband to do what he is supposed to do in order to conceive. The Martas and the chauffer are witnesses to the ritual. The chauffer makes sure that everything is in order, and lastly the handmaid which has the most important purpose: bear children for the family. Handmaids are perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle in this story, but also the most oppressed.